More Charts & Demographics

The Rental Vacancies component is based on all monitored and unique online listings for the period of a calendar month. The series starts off in January 2005.

All listings are taken from online monitoring of major listings sites. Only those properties with unique addresses or a unique listing id are used. Those advertisements with no addresses are excluded from the series. Any addresses repeated between sites are de-duped.

Only those listings that have been advertised for three weeks or more (and are still currently advertised as at the time of collation) are used.

Established Dwellings

For years 2001, 2006 and 2011 we use the number of total established Dwellings (as a base) by postcode as determined by the ABS census, and multiply this by the percentage of renters for each postcode also provided in the census. With the 2016 census update we have used the number of renters as counted plus a proportion of renters multiplied by occupant not stated nor applicable. Years and months in between census points are interpolated. This provides an estimated available total stock for rent.

The numerator is then divided into the denominator, which provides a vacancy rate percentage.

Some have argued that using online real estate listings cannot be done because of advertising of false listings and properties that are only advertised for a fleeting moment as they are taken up immediately. We have addressed those issues.

We have left out those ads without an advertised address or unique property id and have also taken into account a whole month’s worth of listings which automatically adjusts for those ads withdrawn quickly.